-Confounding Variable #3 - Candidate "kind of" accepts offer, sending background workup back and saying that they have to work through a couple of issues before they can sign the offer letter, but they'll be ready to go on 1/5. Also says that they'll be on an early Christmas break over the next week, and they can only be reached via email.

-Me - Since the candidate won't return my calls, I politely ask (via email) for commitment via signed offer letter, citing time line, other candidates, etc. Offer to help candidate work through issues he has regarding offer letter, like non-compete, etc.

So, what happened? I'm glad you asked. Most of you guessed the probability of signing the candidate to be low. After all, as many of you pointed out, a motivated candidate doesn't play games with phone contact if he's going to come to work for you.

Still, we wanted the candidate, and I put the hiring probability at around 10%. As you see from my last contact, I was willing to play the game a bit longer under the remote possibility we would land the candidate and it would end up being good for everyone.

Unfortunately, my hiring manager wasn't. He sent an unprofessional, cut to the chase email that I'll informally paraphrase as follows:

"Dude - your unwillingness to commit and the fact you are telling us you can't talk for a couple of days is freaking me out. Put up or shut up by telling us whether you are coming or not by 10am tomorrow or we're out".

Signed - "Still love ya, but for the love of Shatner make a call - The hiring manager"

About 20 minutes after that email, the candidate indicated (via email, of course) he had changed his mind and would pursue other opportunities, and also asked for mileage reimbursement for the travel to the interview.

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is from "Night Shift", which stars a post-Happy Days Henry Winkler (Chuck) and a young Michael Keaton (Billy Blazejowski) who run an...um... escort service from their overnight post at a city mortuary.

Billy Blaze can't shut his mouth. Chuck finally breaks down, grabs his sony cassette recorder (Billy Blaze uses it to record all the ideas he has every day) and says the following: "This is Chuck, telling Bill to shut up."

Billy Blaze goes missing after that. Chuck gets worried. He walks through the place, wondering where he is. Then he hears it - a faint recording of his own voice saying the words above. He follows the noise and finds Billy Blaze in a body filing cabinet (that's what they have at those places, right?) repeating the recording of Chuck telling Bill to "shut up"

Your managers need to be reminded to shut up in the coaching process. Telling ain't coaching. If you're a manager and you talk first after you've laid the groundwork with an observation, you lose. You're weak.

It's easy to tell them what to do. It's hard to let them participate and be nimble on your feet based on what you hear.

If you're like me, having kids has totally changed your view of developing talent... Why? Because it's more personal when the talent has your blood line...

Case in point - my youngest son is a shy one. With that in mind, we've started looking for avenues to force him into interaction that he'd rather avoid if left to his own prefereces. Example: We've got a tradition of hittting the same Mexican resturaunt on Fridays. When we're winding down, we give him the credit card and make him go to the counter to do the transaction (don't forget the tip son, you know when you're tipping that you're making a statement on what you thought about the service, right?).

Deal with it. You're going to have a lifetime of this...

Another example from our life - I've got 24 4 grade kids in a youth basketball program out of our school district. We wanted to do a service project as a team, so we found a great local cause - the Hope For Gabe Foundation (H4G), which is a non-porift in Birmingham dedicated to finding a cure for Duchenne, a type of Muscular Dystrophy. Here's what we're doing - in our last weekend of the regular season, we're holding a pledge drive, and we're asking for a pledge for every point we score. The families are using their networks to ask for the pledges, but here's the catch - we had Gabe's family come in to talk about the non-profit, and the kids got a script to follow for fund raising. So the kids have to be the ones to pitch everyone they ask for a pledge - not the parents.

Which means they have to get comfortable telling the story and asking for help. While we'll raise a couple thousand for H4G, the big win for our program is that the kids have to do the asking. The picture above is one of our kids making the pitch at a local youth hoops game.

No pressure son - just be brilliant, make the ask and close the deal.

It all makes me wonder how we can get more stuff into the program that's going to help them in life beyond sports.

One of the biggest obstacles to discussing the concept of innovation is the perception that innovation can only involve unique ideas. Ask someone to define what innovation is, and they'll usually give you an explanation that indicates you have to have a mixture between Edison and Einstein to be considered innovative.

Of course, that's crap. Some of the best innovators around take the ideas of others and make them better or simply more marketable than others. The ability to tweak a product or service and make it more palatable to the masses is a key skill in the world of innovation.

"I'd worked on "Damaged" through the fall of 1996. I would visit Dorothy Lewis in her office at Bellevue Hospital, and watch the videotapes of her interviews with serial killers. At one point, I met up with her in Missouri. Lewis was testifying at the trial of Joseph Franklin, who claims responsibility for shooting, among others, the civil-rights leader Vernon Jordan and the pornographer Larry Flynt. In the trial, a videotape was shown of an interview that Franklin once gave to a television station. He was asked whether he felt any remorse. I wrote:

"I can't say that I do," he said. He paused again, then added, "The only thing I'm sorry about is that it's not legal.""What's not legal?"Franklin answered as if he'd been asked the time of day: "Killing Jews."

That exchange, almost to the word, was reproduced in "Frozen." (a broadway play) I faxed Bryony Lavery (the author of play) a letter:

"I am happy to be the source of inspiration for other writers, and had you asked for my permission to quote—even liberally—from my piece, I would have been delighted to oblige. But to lift material, without my approval, is theft."

Almost as soon as I'd sent the letter, though, I began to have second thoughts. The truth was that, although I said I'd been robbed, I didn't feel that way.

Then I got a copy of the script for "Frozen." I found it breathtaking. I realize that this isn't supposed to be a relevant consideration. And yet it was: instead of feeling that my words had been taken from me, I felt that they had become part of some grander cause. In late September, the story broke. The Times, the Observerin England, and the Associated Press all ran stories about Lavery's alleged plagiarism, and the articles were picked up by newspapers around the world. Bryony Lavery had seen one of my articles, responded to what she read, and used it as she constructed a work of art. And now her reputation was in tatters. Something about that didn't seem right.

If you read the entire piece from Gladwell, which I would recommend, you'll find Gladwell building a strong case that the best innovators are the ones who can be influenced by work, even take parts of it, then re-purpose that work in a meaningful way as part of a bigger context or distinct individual style. Case in point - would you believe Kurt Cobain lifted a riff from the classic rock band Boston to create "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the groups breakout hit and perhaps the start of the floodgates for a musical movement called "Grunge"?". Say isn't so? It is according to Gladwell:

""That sound you hear in Nirvana," my friend said at one point, "that soft and then loud, kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain"—Nirvana's lead singer and songwriter—"was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'?"—here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. "That's Boston's 'More Than a Feeling.'" He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, "The first time I heard 'Teen Spirit,' I said, 'That guitar lick is from "More Than a Feeling."' But it was different—it was urgent and brilliant and new."

Judge for yourself. Here are the two songs (go to :45 mark of the of the Boston cut and compare to the intro and main chorus of Teen Spirit):

Gladwell's point is a good one - take the literal view of plagiarism, and you'll soon be in a world that allows no artistic license with the works of others. Take that a step further and maybe Kurt Cobain never experiments with that riff and Nirvana never escapes Seattle.

Regardless of how you feel about Cobain, Courtney Love, Nirvana or Grunge, the real point is broader. If you natually default to the take that innovation has to be original ideas, you're screwed before you start. Encourage the kids in your company to experiment with the work of others and create mashups that represent new work product - regardless if it's been heavily influenced by others. I get that you can't directly lift the ideas of others and you should comply with all current laws, but let's face it - my blogging style is heavily influenced by 3 to 4 other bloggers whose early work I enjoyed. This post is a riff off Gladwell's work that I read earlier this morning. I'm reading and reacting and trying to spin some meaning to my audience.

If you're looking for a definition of innovation, Gladwell's piece on the true meaning of plagiarism is a must read.

Being great in anything generally takes three things according to Gladwell and Colvin:

1. Thousands of hours of work,

2. Access to facilities/tools/instruments, and

3. A coach who's willing to push you and give you constant, on demand feedback (that's Tiger Mom, people - and it's not limited to those of Asian descent).

Is pushing a kid in a single direction bad for the kid? Maybe.

But maybe not. What's interesting about the whole Tiger Mom/Outliers/Talent is Overrated body of work is that choices have to be made. You can pursue a couple of things hard. Academics obviously need to be one of those, but then, you have to make a choice. Musical instrument? Sports? Writing?

You can't do it all and reach mastery. What's interesting as I watch my own kids is that a Tiger Mom/Dad type is required to get the base amount of hours in towards mastery of anything. The kid is not going to do it on his own.

But then, especially if competition is involved, a funny thing can happen. If they get the base hours in and they're successful, sometimes they want to practice and work. The success, and the self-esteem that comes with it, can be addicting. If they understand that limited mastery came from the work, they're more open to the work.

Of course, the grind required to get to that point isn't fun. But I have to think that the ability to grind comes in really handy later in life when they've chosen a profession and everyone around them has talent.

At that point, the ability to grind can take over. The ability to outwork and outgrind others around you is a pretty good life skill if the kid understands what results over time.

If you want to be average, don't grind out the hours and don't choose to chase one or two things really hard...just don't bitch about Tiger Mom...

New series at the Capitalist: The Top 100 Movie Quotes of all time for HR Pros. In no special order, I break down the 100 movie quotes that resonate most for me as a career HR pro. Some will be funny, some will be serious... Some will tug at your heart like when the Fox voice-over guy said, "Tonight - a very special episode of 90210"... You get the vibe... I'll do it countdown-style like they're ranked, but let's face it - they're ALL special..

#86: ""Fight Club was the beginning, now it's moved out of the basement, it's called Project Mayhem"...

--Tyler Durden from Fight Club

When do you use this quote as an HR Pro? When someone, who thought you were going to check with them before you did anything, is suddenly suprised that you've moved forward without keeping them in the loop.

They wanted control. They wanted you to check in. You moved forward anyway.

"That was what we were doing, but we've improved it. It's called Project Mayhem now."

Using the term "Project Mayhem" adds a little twist to it. First, it's topical due to the Fight Club reference, and more importantly, it underscores the loss of control the person challenging you feels.

You're a professional. You know what to do. You don't need no stinking badges.

Them: "I thought we were going to talk before you started bringing in candidates".

You: "I know we talked about that, but I thought I'd mix some candidates around the team to get started. Turns out they love Jim and Trudy. They've probably talked to you about them, right?"

Them: "Yeah, that's why I'm saying I thought we were going to wait until I gave you the green light."

You: "You still control when to hire. The good news is that your team has a couple of candidates they love."

You're proactive. You're not simply taking orders on a piece of paper. Are you?

Order taking was the beginning, now it's moved out of the basement, it's called Project Mayhem.

I used to be in the wireless industry back in the day. Back when Motorola was king, then an upstart named Nokia came along with sweet software for its handsets that knocked Motorola back on its heels in a way it's never really recovered from. Nokia used to be king.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nokia's now on its heels in a big way...

It was good stuff. But once you say you suck, you've kind of raised the bar for what comes next cuturally in your company. You see, Elop pointed his troops as follows:

"We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

If you haven't read the memo referenced in the link at the start of this post, I'd encourage you to do that. It's a scathing rebuke of a culture grown soft and non-innovative. So much so, when you finally get to the line I shared above, you're thinking, "this guy is really going to blow it all up. He's going to roll the dice in a way that can get Nokia back in the game. All or nothing, he's going to take a huge swing on 2/11/11.

The lesson? When you call your company a burning platform, when you say the Chinese can develop and deliver a handset in the time it takes us to review a powerpoint presentation, when you call out your employees and the culture you live in....

...you better bring more than annoucing that you're loading Windows on every smartphone you produce.

I like the new Windows mobile software. So much so that when I was in an AT&T store, I asked a rep about it. I said it was smooth and then asked the key question - "are you selling any of these?"

AT&T Rep - "I like it too, but I haven't sold a single handset with the new Windows OS - and we've had it for 3 months"....

Somewhere, Apple and Google execs have crossed off Nokia as a threat to their wireless platform business... My take is we'll see another letter from another Nokia CEO 2 years from now...

OK kids: Here's one of the most brutally honest letters from a CEO you'll ever see. It comes from the CEO of Nokia (Stephen Elop) to a group of employees, and in it he talks about the wireless device provider having its lunch eaten by Apple on the high end and by Droid on the low end. He talks about coming Wall Street/Credit Rating downgrades, and talks openly about how the culture is broken.

Example: In talking about speed to market, he quotes an employee as saying that the Chinese can develop a "device much faster than us, in the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation."

Engadget first broke the memo and I'm sharing the whole thing below. It's that good. Read it and think about whether you would want to work at a company with this CEO. My take is that I would, although if you're going to shock the system with this, I think the thing needs a little bit more "where do we go from here", although that's promised and looks to be released to the troops this week.

It's easy to critique from the stands. Very interesting stuff, so take a read. The backstory from Engadget, full text of the CEO memo below:

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple's market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers. Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry's innovation to its core.

Let's not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally - taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don't have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation." They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we're not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor's informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody's took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes? Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It's also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

They think they are smarter than you In many ways, and many times they're correct. To keep it simple, I'll just focus on one way today. Tell me if this morality play happens in your company:

Your employee: Opens up browser to post something witty on Twitter or Facebook.

Your network: Blocks the employee from accessing the social network in question, perhaps with the digital equivalent of a little finger wagging at the employee (bonus malice points if the message the employee sees refers to the social network in question as “the” Facebook/Twitter).

Your employee: Promptly swivels in chair to access the social network in question through the browser on his or her smart phone. Your company isn’t blocking cell towers in your buildings, right?

The verdict: Employee continues to think they are smarter than you. Based on this morality play, they have a decent case...

New series at the Capitalist: The Top 100 Movie Quotes of all time for HR Pros. In no special order, I break down the 100 movie quotes that resonate most for me as a career HR pro. Some will be funny, some will be serious... Some will tug at your heart like when the Fox voice-over guy said, "Tonight - a very special episode of 90210"... You get the vibe... I'll do it countdown-style like they're ranked, but let's face it - they're ALL special..

#87: "These aren't the Droids you're looking for"...

--Obi-Wan Kenobi from the Star Wars

Jedi mind tricks. Sometimes you need them as an HR Pro. You're never in greater need than when someone you know and trust asks you for a reference on someone for whom you can say nothing positive.

You're in a tight spot. Liability and hurt feelings all around you. The need to be truthful with someone who's made the request you know and respect.

What should you do? Don't talk about the person, talk about the role. What's the job again? What are you looking for?

Suddenly, an opening appears. It has nothing to do with the candidate in question, or how they're awful. You begin speaking in Jedi HR code about "fit" for the position and things that are required that just aren't present in the candidate in question. Your spin isn't candidate centric, it's position specific.

You need an Account Manager who's going to show up every day and deal with bombs from customers and not get frustrated?

"This isn't the droid you're looking for"... The candidate you asked me about is more of a hunter than a farmer. Sure, I didn't tell you that he once took a swing at a co-worker in an after hours drink-off and had affairs with two clerks who were married. You didn't need to know that.

All you needed to know? This isn't the droid you're looking for. Move along, Sparky. I just helped you and maintained my dignity. Boom.